I may not have been explicit enough in my basic point: the reason I say Detroit would never allow it is because Detroit is the car-centered motor city. Any plan for toll gates a la Chicago would fail for the same reason every and all toll-ANYTHING having to do with roads and driving would fail. Toll roads, even access-limited HOV lanes, mass transit, you name it. The average Detroiter regards unencumbered access to the highways a Constitutional right, not something anyone should have the ability to restrict and impede the way tollgates do. Not that I say there's anything wrong with that - I actually still agree wholeheartedly, even as an ex-Detroiter. I'll give up my car the day they pluck the keys from my cold, dead fingers, and the green-earth environmentalists who would try to make me feel guilty about it can all just cough and drop dead. [[And no, I am not being sarcastic).
Now before you make me out to be some kind of polluting ogre with a million-square-mile carbon footprint, there's more. I actually currently live only 2 miles from work and in a year round sunny warm weather climate and have the luxury of being able to bicycle to and from work almost every day. But I am doing that by choice and because I enjoy it, not out of any sense of obligation to the Al Gore Save The Whales crowd, and if my circumstances ever changed that might also very well change. NO ONE should be beholden to an inconvenient bus schedule or hoops and hurdles if their preference is to own and drive their own vehicle independently, as long as they are of sufficient mental and physical health to be able do so safely.
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